What I Stitched This Week – Jan. 9-15, 2023

The past seven days have been a heck of a rollercoaster here in Measi Land. I celebrated my 48th turn around the sun on Wednesday with a wonderfully relaxing day off. Then it quickly turned sad, as one of my Stitching Sisters of New England friends, Carol, passed away early Saturday morning. She was older – I refuse to go down the “elderly” road – and had been looking frail over the last few months, but it still came as a shock. So my brain and emotions are all over the place. My stitching circle has had a very rough couple of years between members dealing with cancer, heart attacks, other hospital-related illnesses, two Sisters’ deaths, and the losses of loved ones. Somehow, though, we just keep moving, reminding ourselves to hold each other a little closer in our hearts. I’ve been a bit more distant from the group as a whole lately as I work through some personal emotional/mental stuff. This is my reminder to stop hiding, even when everything in my brain wants me to.

I’d planned on making a WIP Parade FlossTube this weekend, but it’s just not the right time. Sometime soon – once I take a little breath about everything.

(deep breath)

So… despite that rockiness, it was a pretty good stitching week.

I started the week with some work on my ABCs of Parenting by Lizzie Kate, which was the second of my four WIPGO pieces for the month. It also wound up being the focus piece for Week Two of “Choose My WIP” over on Semi-Sane Stitchers on Facebook. I featured it this past week with my “before” photo here. It stitches up pretty quickly, and I’m happy with my WIPGO progress on it. I may put this in as one of my monthly focuses later this year for WIPocalypse, because I could probably get it done easily if I just did a length or two per night on it.

On Friday night I just felt like curling up with something fairly easy as Erich and I watched The Matrix Resurrections for the second time. I grabbed Flying Lesson by Silver Creek Samplers and threw some green and black stitches in to complete the header text and the very top of the witch hat. I fully expect to finish this piece for Halloween this year. Once I get that witch hat and the moon behind it completed, the rest of it will go super fast. Hopefully it comes up on an early WIPGO month and I can just devote a week to it or something. It may come up next week for Choose My WIP – it’s only down by one vote right now! Maybe I’ll toss it in the ring for Week 4 if it doesn’t win this week. I’d like to get that hat done so I can move on from black floss for a little while.

I’d originally planned on working on my 3rd WIPGO piece for Saturday and Sunday. After the news about Carol, though, I knew I needed a night to work on one of my pieces that she’d expressed a lot of interest in. Solid color stitching, some basic rows, and nothing complicated. It helped ground me and let me work through my thoughts, both happy and sad, as I stitched late into the night after everyone else was upstairs. On this piece, I added the light blue at the top (where you see the “2” outlined), carrying it down the right side of that brown-outlined triangle. This is the other piece that is currently up for Choose My WIP for week 3, winning by one. If it wins, I’ll be working the blue down to the right (to outline the “0”) to form the other side of the octagonal motif just to the left of my needle minder in this photo. For those familiar with how this stitch-a-long was divided in 2021, it’s the February portion. I have January’s complete and have moved down into April a bit to let that blue Assisi-style band flow naturally. I do plan on roughly stitching the piece generally in month-release order. Where it makes sense to skip around to form a motif across the month dividers, though – I’ll make the jump.

Finally yesterday I started on my WIPGO piece, although I have to admit I’m just not feeling it. It’s one of my oldest pieces and all I have to do is backstitching – a LOT of backstitching – and a bit of fill-in repair where my stitches were way too tight. This was my first piece ever attempted on linen, so my tension was way off in a few spots – and I think that is part of my mental block about getting it done. I’m just annoyed with my stitches in the top left where I first started. I need to add a stitch over the originals to fatten them up here and there, and they’ll look much better. I’ll be doing a bit more work on it tonight – backstitching, and then it will sleep for a while. One of these days I’ll just suck it up and push through the rest of it. For now? No. I’ll just do what my goal was for WIPGO, which was the entire point of my goals. Some of these pieces I won’t be feeling as much. That’s okay. WIPGO will let me at least touch them for a couple days so I can remind myself where I am on everything.

So what’s in store this week? Apache tonight to complete my WIPGO goal. Tomorrow night I’ll be joining Abi Bellastitch on her #StitchYourAlphabet SAL. She’s working ABC Hornbook by the Primitive Needle. I’ll be working Alphabet of Stitches by Morning Glory Needleworks, since I have that fully kitted and partially basted. Wednesday/Thursday/Friday will be Choose My WIP focus, which will lead me into the first 24 Hours of Cross Stitch Marathon next weekend and a batch of “whatever I want” chaos.

A busy week – both past and upcoming! Hope all of you have a good week – see you next weekend!